Per the bombshell Carbon Majors Report, prepared by the environmental non-profit CDP and the Climate Accountability Institute, a staggering 71 percent of all carbon emissions since 1988 can be traced back to only 100 corporations, most of which are fossil fuels producers. Even more alarming, half of all global industrial emissions can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities.
If emissions continue at the same rate for the next 28 years as they have for the last 28 years, global average temperatures would rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, resulting in catastrophic consequences for civilization, including:
- the inundation of coastal cities;
- increasing risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutrition rates; many dry regions becoming dryer and wet regions wetter;
- unprecedented heat waves in many regions, especially in the tropics;
- substantially exacerbated water scarcity in many regions;
- increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones;
- irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.
These 100 companies, of which ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Hess, Murray Coal, and Chesapeake Energy Corp are a part, are a clear and present danger to civilization, and action must be taken at once to ensure that average global temperatures do not pass the point of no return.
Our top priority – not just as Democrats or Republicans, or even Americans, but humans – should be to transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy, to end our use of fossil fuels, to curb meat consumption, to protect and expand forests, and to eliminate our carbon footprint. Of course, even all of those actions will be useless if the corporations responsible for the vast majority of such dangerous emissions do not act now.
We, the undersigned, demand that immediate action be taken. The future of this planet depends on it and time is quickly running out.
